ZENE'S MAN AND WOMAN.


A covered wagon appeared on the first crossroad, moving steadily
between rows of elder bushes. The carriage waited its approach. A
figure like Zene's sat resting his feet on the tongue behind the old
gray and the old white.

"It's our wagon," said Robert Day. Presently Zene's countenance, and
even the cast in his eyes, became a certainty instead of a wavering
indistinctness, and he smiled with satisfaction while halting his
vehicle at right angles with the carriage.

"Where have you been?" inquired Grandma Padgett.

"Over on t'other road," replied Zene, indicating the direction with
his whip, "huntin' you folks. I knowed you hadn't made the right turn
somehow."

Grandma Padgett mentioned her experience with the Dutch landlord and
the ford, both of which Zene had avoided by taking another cross-road
that he had neglected to indicate to them. He said he thought they
would see the wagon-track and foller, not bein' fur behind. When he
discovered they were not in his train, he was in a narrow road and
could not turn; so he tied the horses and walked back a piece. He got
on a corn-field fence and shouted to them; but by that time there was
no carriage anywhere in the landscape.

"Such things won't do," said Grandma Padgett with some severity.